Ok. If you are around my age (24) then I am sure you remember the very cool and somewhat faddy frisbee the Aerobie.

Back in who knows when I was awestruck when I first saw one fly. The 80’s neon pink ring flew for what seemed like forever. Alan Adler, the inventor of the Aerobie flying disk, offered $1000 for a world record breaking throw using his flying ring in 1986. Erin Hemmings achieved the world throwing record of more than a quarter mile using Alan’s silly little ring. Upon inventing the Aerobie, Alan Adler founded Aerobie, Inc obviously so he could sell his Aerobie.

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This really isn’t new information, and most reading this will already know that this works. In my life I have had periods where I have turned off my brain and periods where I am thinking constantly. During the periods where I shut down I found that I don’t grasp things as fast and I make more poor decisions. When I am constantly working at figuring out problems then things seem to come to me much easier. The amount one thinks defines greatness. I honestly believe that anyone can become great if they put their mind to it. Most everyone knows someone who coasts through life. That person will never become great. The brain is like any other muscle and it needs to be challenged to grow and become smarter.

It is not an intelligence-boosting formula likely to impress an Oxbridge don: watching Countdown, playing Sudoku, remembering telephone numbers and taking a shower with your eyes closed. Yet doing ‘brain exercises’ such as these can make us all up to 40 per cent cleverer within seven days, according to research by a BBC programme this week.

link to GuardianUnlimited article

It might sound like an after school special, but if you don’t exercise your brain then it becomes lazy. This article brings up a good point. It is not always necessary to do extremely challenging problems to exercise your brain. Sudoku, for example, is not a very hard game. There isn’t any math involved or complex rules. It simply takes patience to solve the problems. The point is to get your brain thinking, and by doing so it is more receptive to problem solving. Sudoku is even recommended by some doctors to be played by the elderly to combat senility. In an age where you can get computer to do almost all of your thinking for you, it is easy to forget to stop and think.

I also found an excellent read on effective problem solving techniques.

Some of you reading this may have heard of Stereo Lithography Process (SLA) machines or 3-D printers. These machines have been used for quite some time for making tangible prototype parts across all engineering fields in less than a day. They have proven to be invaluable for verifying design before it is sent out to be manufactured or made in-house because of the costly process of making molds for plastic injection molding machines, etc.

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I find that anything with the word "nano " or "mems " in the name is bound to be cool.  When I first read about IBM moving 35 atoms around to spell out thier company name it blew my mind. This happened in April of 1990. At the time I never would have thought that was possible. Well, the world of nanotechnology has come very far since then.

Chemist James Tour and his collegues of Rice University in Houston, Texas have built one trillion trillion nanocars that have actual spinning wheels. The cars can be guided using an electron beam that will pull them along using static electricity, or by heating up the gold-plated surface they drive on causing the molecules in the wheels to get excited and start spinning.

Future versions of these cars will have a "truckbed" to carry around molecules such as oxygen and have tiny motors that consist of photons that strike a paddle-wheel-like molecule in the chassis creating a reaction that spins the wheels. The current design already incorporates a suspension system that allows them to drive over bumpy surfaces.

One of Tour’s ideas is to one day use these nanocars to carve tiny channels in silicon which will create more-powerful computer chips.

via Popular Science  

This relates a bit to Cory’s blog article, Crazy powerstrips, from January 17th, 2006.

Everyday wall outlets have essentially stayed the same ever since they were invented. Luckilly there are innovators like 360 Electrical that have rethought the wall outlet. Is it perfect? No, but what an improvement. This eliminates 99% of the problems I have with wall outlets which is they just don’t work well with wall transformers. This handy product isn’t out yet, but hopefully soon.

J. Fizzle sent me a couple links that I found highly entertaining.

Overheard in New York…

…and Overheard in the Office

In the words of creator S. Morgan Friedman:

I’m an easily amused compulsive people watcher. By going through the Web pages which I’ve created, listed below, you can get a sense of who Steven Morgan Friedman is (this is virtual people watching).

Mullen Motors has partnered with Hybrid Technologies to create a Hybrid that has been rated as the seventh fastest American production car by Forbes magazine.

The GT with its combination of style, handling and performance makes it one of the most outstanding cars produced in the world today.  Fitted with the Corvette LS 2 V-8 it has 400HP wgich takes it from 0-60mph in just over 3 seconds and its top speed is 180mph.  The wheel base of the GT is 94" and it weighs approximately 2000 pounds.

The GT can be powered by a variety of engines ranging from in-line 4 cylinders to V-6 rotary or various V-8s.  The GT is also available with a carbon fiber body.  This reduces the weight to approximately 1900 pounds.

Base price for this beast will only be a mere $70,000 USD.  Not bad considering what you get.  Hybrid will be taking orders for the carbon fiber supercar at the 2006 New York International Auto Show in April.  The Lithium Carbon Fiber supercar model is estimated to retail at approximately $124,900 USD.

Sooooo… I went to a friends wedding today with Treanna. It was a very nice ceremony, however even at the best ceremony boredom is bound to set in. What to do… hmmm. I’ve got it!!! Digital camera plus plate with decorative butter balls equals a really crappy but highly entertaining stop animation. Enjoy…

Although not available yet, this will be a very useful tool. The official beta launch will be in March. There are several similar sites out there such as Koders, but nothing that will do quite what krugle boasts:

krugle’s role

While the development world has changed, the tools that developers use haven’t kept up. Developers spend from 20-25 percent of their time looking for code and code related information – a frustrating situation for programmers, and an expensive problem for companies.

Current search engines are okay for finding web pages, but they don’t crawl or find source code, whether in open repositories or within source code control systems (SCCS). They also don’t leverage the inherent structure of code to support the types of searches programmers need.

krugle vision

Krugle answers the need for a single place to find relevant code and critical technical information. By making it easy for anyone to find, elevate and communicate, Krugle fills a critical gap in todays technology rich environment.

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I thought this was a hilarious stop animation! I ran across it on Grow-A-Brain. It was in the extreme sports section, posted on December 12, 2005.

No, the above image has not been Photoshopped. The Tango electric vehicle is rediculously narrow.

What makes this electric so damn cool is its performance. Zero to sixty times are clocked at a remarkable 4 seconds! Top speed is also good at 150 MPH.
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Here is an excellent read on the reverse engineering General Motors does. Courtesy of Wired News.

A silver Lexus RX 400h hybrid SUV is suspended on a lift in a room the size of a soccer field at the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. It was purchased off the lot just a few days ago for $49,000, loaded, which seems a waste, since it’s already a carcass. Mechanic John Klucka has removed its tires and engine and doors and seats and dashboard and, well, just about everything but a few wires and the windshield. “This is a complicated vehicle,” he says, unbolting the engine from its frame, “and I’ve got no manual, so I’m taking it apart blind.”

According to Wired News analog sets will be a thing of the past by February 17, 2009.

Pending a signature from the President of the United States, the deadline for all American televisions to go digital has officially been set. On February 17, 2009, analog signals will be a thing of the past and all TVs will either need built-in digital tuners or will require an adapter to remain useful. So those of you who love your old analog TVs better whoop it up while you can. The clock is ticking and only three years remain.

Meanwhile, the price of digital sets is steadly — or even sharply — falling. This past holiday buying season saw a number of 50-inch plasma HDTV sets selling well under the $1,000 mark. Granted, those weren’t what you’d call quality equipment, but it’s a sign of things to come. And with Sony’s recent restructuring to increase its focus on flat-panel HDTV sets, we can count on competition to heat up in the low- to mid-range category.

I blogged about this January 14th of this year.

Finally an OLED keyboard was released called the Optimus Mini Three. It is not the full keyboard everyone is waiting for (which is scheduled for release the end of 2006), but it is still cool.

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This idea is a bit ridiculous in my opinion. Fender and Intel decided to create a concept guitar that has a wireless internet enabled tablet PC in the body. It is a standard Fender electric guitar that you can flip around and surf the web at will. Talk about an ultra specific customer base! I highly doubt this will ever hit the shelves. It is however kinda cool looking… I wonder how it sounds.